Your lovers of the picturesque take a start to the Isle of Wight, for the purpose of pedestrianising to Bon-Church and Steep Hill; or if they are rich enough, stretch their flight as far as Swansea or Tenbigh, or the Lakes, that they may talk about the mountains and mountaineers of Wales-sympathize with the two famous female recluses of Llangothlin ; or criticise and quote Wordsworth, Wilson, and Southeywrite sonnets on Windermere; and fill their albums and diaries with sketches of ruins, descriptions of scenery, and details of sensations.

Many are the motives which take people to bathing-places; your invalid goes for health-your citizen for relaxationyour ennuyé for variety: some go to blow off the smoke of London by the keen breezes of the surrounding downs; others, under the idea of preserving and lengthening their lives, by pickling themselves in the sea. Various motives take various people; but Fashion alone took Mr. Fleming and his family to Brighton.

He never chose that season of the year at which the seabreezes and country air are in reality the pleasantest; but precisely at that period at which Fashion has decreed that they are the most wholesome he never failed in his annual excursion, and more particularly when the presence of royalty attracted all the attachés of the court, and made it still more fashionable to be at Brighton.

To such a man as Mr. Fleming, one may easily suppose, that the nod of royalty was wealth and pleasure. He could breathe freely in the atmosphere of a court, because restraint was natural to him; and therefore he was never himself amidst that freedom of general society which sanctioned greater liberties than were accordant with his notions of propriety.

He was perpetually thinking that one person did not treat him with sufficient respect; that the freedom of another was ill-bred; that this person laughed too loud, or that another talked too long; that one interrupted him in the midst of his argument; that another did not listen with sufficient attention. He lived upon the minutiae of society, instead of its general principles; and seemed perpetually to be separating the atmosphere in which he breathed, into the particles of which it is composed. He looked upon its constitution as upon a piece of mechanism, of which he only saw the cogs of the wheels fitting into each other as they revolved, without understanding the principles of the machinery.

But in the etiquette of a courtly circle, he was never offended. None could take a liberty, excepting those from whom a liberty might be deemed a condescension, and considered an honour.

In such a circle, such a man as Mr. Fleming was in his element; and as his entrée only extended to those general occasions where the etiquette is strictly observed, his ideas of courtly propriety were never shocked by that freedom of conversation and discussion which the urbanity of its chief always cultivated, and encouraged in those who are admitted to the more domestic circle of his interior.

Some few years since, Brighton was not the overgrown place it has now become, although even then it was the epitome of London.

On its Steyne, and along its open and sandy beach, might be seen the gay and gallant soldier and courtier mingled with the portly citizen and the humble shopkeeper. Muslin wrappers, and bright-coloured ribands were every day floating in the light breezes which came freshened across the waters of the ocean.-Young eyes and hearts sparkled and danced in the clear and bright sunshine, which added animation to the already animated scene that its cliffs and arid promenades presented.-Young ladies were seen equestrianising on donkeys to the Devil's Dyke; and elderly matrons airing in flies, with bodies which, in comparison with their carriages, appeared like unwieldy tortoises on the legs of a caterpillar. In short, Brighton was then in its infancy; and there was a lightness, a gayety, a nonchalance about its pursuits, which its subsequent corpulence has destroyed.

There were then no unwieldly building speculations to interrupt the expansion of views over the healthy Downs. No packs of half-bred harriers to tempt the equestrian dexterity of a citizen to attend the "throwing off," to the eminent hazard of his neck. No Chain Pier to invite the evening tête-à-tête, and to astonish by the lightness and science of its construction.

The visiters, too, were then contented with the "chicken" gaming which was prevalent at the libraries, where the utmost risk was a few shillings, and the ultimate gain a workbox of Tunbridge ware, or a smelling-bottle, which was devoted to some fair one by the fortunate winner. None had thought of setting up what are so appropriately termed "hells,"" or instituting club-houses for the admission of "exclusives.”

Every thing then bespoke an air of liberty and nonchalance; all seemed to be devoted to amusement. A meeting at a library or in a ball-room was sufficient to authorize occasional gossip; and morning rencontres in dressing-gowns at the bathing-place, was considered enough to constitute a temporary acquaintance.

True, on a return to town, the watering-place acquaintance was dropped. The parties we gossipped with, in familiar intercourse about sea-gulls and sea-breezes on the Steyne, or danced with in a Brighton ball-room, under the authorized introduction of an ex-military master of the ceremonies, were cut in a rencontre in Pall-Mall, Hyde Park, or the Exhibition.

The girl with whom we had condescended to flirt and talk nonsense, on a morning ramble upon donkeys to Rottendean, was overlooked when an occasional visit of her city papa to the opera placed her in our way in the crush-room, to which perhaps she had urged her family, under the hope of meeting her Brighton beau, and renewing her sentimental flirtation, little thinking that the circumstances, and conversation, and compliments, which had made a lasting impression on her memory, and grown into consequence by her repeated contemplation of them, had been the mere butterflies of a moment with him, as ephemeral as the breath with which they had been uttered, or the marks with which he had perhaps traced her initials in the sand.

Now, society at Brighton is on a different construction. There are no accidental rencontres and mere occasional acquaintance. People only speak to their own set; and a proper and formal introduction is as necessary as it is in London.

All this rendered Brighton the most congenial place in the world to Mr. Fleming. To him it was necessary to breathe the atmosphere of fashion; all other collision was disagreeable; and, therefore, though the quietude of their own estate would have been more conducive to the health of Mrs. Fleming, to Brighton went the family, with a cavalcade of imperial-crowned carriages, which drove up with the whole establishment to their house on the Steyne, to the great pleasure of a hundred attendant tradesmen, and to the delight of Martha Gunn, the bathing-woman, whose amphibious appearance and extraordinary strength was at that period the asto

nishment of every Brighton visiter she was the Moll Flagon of that day; and even Liston might have taken a hint from her in his unrivalled personification of that character.

ALL the family were soon settled in Brighton. The establishment was as complete as in London; for Mr. Fleming's wealth carried every convenience of life with him. In his house there were no make-shifts; every thing was perfectly well appointed, or perhaps too well appointed; for there was an appearance of study even in the modern negligence of his drawing-room and library; and with all these appurtenances of fashion, London hours and customs were, of course, imported likewise.

On their arrival, they found cards were just issued for a juvenile ball to be given to the little scions of the fashionable elite at Brighton. It would not do for the Flemings to be left out their names were therefore immediately inserted among those on the list at the Pavilion.

Many were the joyful glances and beating hearts that hailed with gratified pride the arrival of the envied talisman that was to admit them to the fairy scene; and many the compressed lip and bitter look of disappointment, and affectedly careless toss of the head, that was occasioned by the necessity of saying "No," to the question of "Have you a card ?"

By these anxiously expecting persons, every knock at the door and every ring of the bell was listened to with anxiety, and followed by disappointment and an emphatic "Psha" as the servant presented on his silver salver the card of some indifferent person. Some contrived that their equipages should be seen constantly dashing in all 'the most frequented promenades-while others made bolder advances, by leaving their names at the Pavilion, to remind the inmates that they were still at Brighton.

The utmost number of cards had, however, been issued ; and many who were left out immediately quitted Brighton for the time; thus at once framing by their absence an apology for their being uninvited, and withdrawing themselves from the enjoyment which their hundred "dear friends" expressed by their eyes, while they condoled with their lips on the disappointment.

To how many malevolent passions of our nature do the most trivial occurrences of life give the opportunity of display! They seem always on the watch-slumbering but not sleeping, and ready on the slightest occasion to rush into action.

All was now hurry and bustle amidst the milliners and mantua-makers at Brighton. Every shop made daily a display of new articles from London and Paris, and many of the great fashionable professors of flounces and furbelows, either came upon voluntary speculation, or were sent for by the more fastidious, to reap their share, or rather more than their share of the profits of what the saints would call ' this vanity fair.'

The mammas and ladies'-maids, and governesses, did not devote their attention to the little silk and satin slips, and pink sashes, and lace frocks, of the little ladies for whom the ball was professedly given, without considering the dress of the mammas themselves. Ambition was not gratified that the children only should outvie those of their friends, but that the parents should also outshine each other.

From childhood upwards we must say,

We grow but greater children every day.

But every thing is for the best; and thus maternal and personal vanity, the one excusable, the other despicable, furnished food and employment to a number of persons who